Goth Girl Rising (2 page)

I
SPEND THE REST OF THE DAY
in my bedroom, just sort of trying to avoid Roger
and
the thought of school tomorrow. I'm not real successful at either one.

I turn up some music and try to drown my own brain, but I only succeed a little bit.

Roger knocks on the door a bunch of times. I talk to him just enough that he won't get too suspicious and start coming in without knocking. He told me on the way home from the hospital: "This is how it's going to be, Kyra—if you give me enough reason to worry about you, I'll just come in without knocking." And then, as if he read my effing mind: "And if it's locked, I'll knock it the hell down."

He thinks when he busts out "hell" I take him more seriously. Yeah. Insert eye roll here. (Man, I wish
life
had emoticons, you know? So that when your dad pisses you off you could like click a mental button or something and just show him one of those rolleyes. That would rock.)

Anyway.

After, like,
forever,
it's finally nighttime. There are no nurses to come in and check on me. No one tries to give me meds or anything like that. No psycho roommate crying herself to sleep.

Just me. In my own bedroom.

Roger knocks and then comes in and sits down. I'm lying on the bed. He sighs because that's what Roger does—he sighs a lot.

He gives me Sad, Tired.

"Are you going to behave in school tomorrow?"

"I guess."

"I need more than a guess, Kyra."

"What do you want from me, Roger?"

He flicks to Pissed Off for a second before returning to Sad, Tired. "I want you to think straight for once."

For some reason I feel sorry for him all of a sudden. That happens sometimes with Sad, Tired.

"I'll try, Dad."

He nods and leaves. I hear him head into his bathroom, then into his bedroom. Pretty soon the TV's on, just loud enough that I can hear
something
but not loud enough to tell what it is.

I give him an hour to fall asleep.

Then I stuffa bunch of clothes and old stuffed animals and shit under my covers to make it look like I'm in bed. I get dressed for the real world for the first time since spring—all black, of course; minimizer bra, of course. In the hospital, my black hair dye washed out, so now I have this ugly brown stuff. Nothing I can do it about it right now.

I sneak out the back door because that one squeaks a lot less than the front door.

Outside. I'm outside.

I'm in my own clothes.

I'm free.

Freedom! Like in that old Mel Gibson movie they made us watch in history. I want to scream it to the night sky:
FREEDOM!

I stand in the cold and shiver a little bit. It's OK, though. The cold's OK. It's better than being in the hospital.

The only real problem is that I have no car. I used to be able to boost one pretty regularly, but I've only been home for a few hours, so I haven't been able to sneak out and steal one. So I'll have to walk to Jecca's. Damn.

Oh, well. I breathe in deep. The air's cold, but it feels good in my lungs. Better than the air in the hospital, that's for damn sure.

I start to walk.

A
ND I CAN'T HELP MYSELF
. Even though I try to think of other things—Jecca, Simone, the party—I keep thinking about Fanboy.

And his graphic novel. And the way he kept trying to check me out without really checking me out and how for the first time in my life that, like, totally didn't bother me or freak me out. Except it freaked me out that it
didn't
freak me out.

I don't get it.

I remember kicking him in the balls. And e-mailing him a picture of me flipping him off. I was so pissed at him. I was so angry.

There was this senior named Dina Jurgens, and she was this total
Maxim
bimbette with the tits and the ass and the legs and the tan and the blond hair and all that shit that makes guys turn into such jackasses. Against all odds, she even put the moves on Fanboy. I found out that at a party one night she started sucking face with him, which is so stupid.

So maybe I was right to be angry because I liked him and I shouldn't have, but he shouldn't have kissed effing
Dina Jurgens
of all people, but she graduated while I was gone, so she's not an issue anymore, right? Out of sight, out of mind.

But he's just
scary
talented. I mean, I've read a lot of comic books and manga and shit, and
Schemata
was just totally kick-ass. I busted him a lot about some of the stuff he put in there, and it really pissed me off that his main character was just wank-bait Dina all grown up, but still. It was amazing. I read most of the script and saw like twenty pages of artwork, and it was phenomenal. I still can't believe that bald little shit Bendis didn't realize he was looking at genius. (Yeah, big-shot Brian Michael Bendis. Big-shot comic book writer. Whatever. Prick. He didn't deserve to see my boobs. Long story.)

Cute, in that geeky way only guys have, really. Geeky girls can't really pull it off. Not the same way. Geeky guys have this shyness that works because it's, like, so different from the normal asshole guy behavior. So when you see a shy guy, it makes you sit up and take notice. It makes you want to understand them or makes you feel like you already understand them or...

I don't know. Protect them? Does that make sense?

I hate jocks. I hate big buff guys who think they were handcrafted by God to dispense orgasms to the world. They're more into themselves than anything or anyone else. And that's just bullshit. Because here's the thing: No one in this world is so great that they're worthy of self-obsession. Believe me, I know. It's just the truth. We're all flawed, broken half-people. None of us is complete or even worthwhile. We all suck.

But Fanboy...

See, for a while there, I thought of him as just "fanboy." Lowercase. It wasn't his name—it was just his description, you know? The way you'd call someone in the army "soldier," or the way obnoxious pigs call guys "sport" or "son."

But somewhere, somehow ... while I was
away,
it changed. It became a
title.
It became like a proper noun, you know?

I guess he wasn't so bad. I mean, it pissed me off that he was obsessed with Dina, but
all
guys are obsessed with her, so I should really let that pass. And he kept messing up stuff about women in his graphic novel, but I realized something while I was away—he
tried.
He was a fifteen-year-old
boy
from effing
Brookdale
and he was trying to create a graphic novel about women and their problems.

I have to give him props for that.

And a part of me ... a part of me thinks that maybe I can help him. Maybe I can help make his graphic novel even better. I mean, I was the only one he showed it to. The only one he trusted. He never even showed it to his "best" friend, this superstar stud jock who's like a secret geek or something.

He showed it to
me.

But I really treated him like shit. I shouldn't have done that.

My shrink in the hospital—Dr. Kennedy—told me that every day is a chance to start your life over again. Which is bullshit, really, but not
total
bullshit. I guess we
can
make changes. Things aren't always set in stone, right?

Fanboy didn't call while I was in the hospital. He couldn't—he didn't know where I was. So I forgive him for that. But he also didn't send me any e-mails, which sort of pisses me off because he could have e-mailed me at least once, right?

But...

Look at it this way: He didn't e-mail me, which is a mean, shitty thing to do. But I was mean to him, too.

So we're even.

So everything is cool, then.

Yeah.

This is what I'm going to do: Make it all better. I can do that.

At school, he'll be excited to see me. I'll apologize and then he'll apologize (see, I'll even go first) and we'll pick up where we left off and this time...

This time I'll try really, really hard not to eff it up.

J
ECCA LIVES ABOUT TEN MINUTES AWAY
by car, but it takes me a while to get there on foot. That's OK—all that time walking and thinking is good for me.

There's a bunch of cars parked along the road, but the house is dark.

I walk into the middle of a "quiet party." Everyone's in the living room, all the furniture pushed into a circle. There's like twenty kids, all dressed in black, some with white makeup like I wear, some with exaggerated black or smoky gray eyeshadow. I'm the only one here without black hair. I feel like someone should revoke my Goth Girl membership card.

There are some candles lighting the room, but that's it.

Most everyone ignores me. They all know I've been in the loony bin for six months. Word got out. Only Simone and Jecca knew
which
loony bin, though, because even though I know almost everyone here, Simone and Jecca are the only ones I would actually call friends.

Jecca squeals and jumps up to hug me. Simone slips me a pack of cigarettes. Bless her.

I get this weird minute where I can't talk. It's like I'm totally overwhelmed. I realize: This is the first time in six months I've been with a
friend.
Six months of nothing but doctors and nurses and whacked-out mental patients and visits from Roger. I talked to Jecca and Simone on the phone a little bit, but that was it.

"You're back," Jecca whispers, still hugging me.

"Yeah." It's the only thing I can manage to say right now. How do you talk to normal people?

"Let her breathe," Simone says, prying us apart. She gives me one of those little one-armed hugs and then pushes a guy off the sofa so that we can sit down.

"What took you so long?" Sim whispers.

"I had to walk."

Sim frowns. "I'll take you home later."

I hate that I have to bum a ride from her. I should have my license by now. I should have a car—my own car, not a stolen one—by now.

The air's thick and sweet with pot. A bong is being passed around. The guy Simone pushed moves that slow way stoned people move. The word is
languid,
I think.

It's weird because I figured I would have all of this shit to talk about when I finally saw Sim and Jecca again, but now that I'm here, I don't want to talk. I don't want to
think.
I'm really glad that the party is "quiet." It's like everyone just sits around and gets mellow and stays quiet. And you have to turn off your cell and shit to come in and it's pretty cool to be in the dark and the quiet for a while. You can talk—you just have to talk
quiet.

So we all just sit here and smoke and relax and it's cool. The chatter's low. No one's talking about anything that matters.

But then someone passes the bong to me and I take a hit and it's not a cigarette, but it's great, really. God, it's been so effing long.

My lungs go all orgasmic with it and I hold my breath so long that I think maybe I've figured out how to never breathe again, how to survive without exhaling. God, would that be cool or what? That's what it feels like, like I don't need air anymore, not as long as I have the sweet smoke in my lungs.

And then my eyes start to spark. That's the only way to describe it—they spark. I start to see little bursts of color. I close my eyes and they're still there and I exhale, letting all the smoke out in a cloud. The whole room's a cloud.

God, this is what I needed. I needed to be with some friends and just ease my way back into the real world after being in the hospital for so long. Now I can go back to school tomorrow. Honestly. I can. I really can.

Simone giggles at nothing and takes a hit and passes the bong along.

Bong along. Heh.

"What's so funny?" Simone asks.

I didn't realize I actually laughed.

Across the circle, Jecca waves to me, slowly,
languidly.
She's totally blissed out. Her parents travel a lot and she has these great mellow parties for the goths in Brookdale and canters-town, even Finn's Crossing. No one's allowed to eff with any of her parents stuff, but that's cool because we're all just here to get away from the rest of the world anyway.

And then it's time for hide-and-seek.

The hide-and-seek we play isn't totally like the old kid game: You get all stoned out of your mind first, and then you go hide and someone has to find you, and it's awesome because you're just blitzed unbelievably.

Last time I played was
months
ago, before I met Fanboy even. I was the seeker and everyone scattered while I sat with my eyes closed, counting to a hundred. And when I opened my eyes, it was like the rest of the world had just vanished, just gone away.

And I loved it.

I mean, I knew deep down that the world was still there. That I wasn't alone in the house, that there were, like, twenty kids hiding just around the corners and up the stairs and all that. But the illusion of complete aloneness was there and that's all I cared about at that moment—the illusion. It worked for me. I didn't question it.